Spirited Away on Halloween: Return of the King
by Charon the Sabercat
Summary: An old king has resurfaced in Halloween Town, and he plans to take back his kingdom, even if it means destroying it. It would help if Jack could even remember who he was, though... FINALLY FLIPPIN' FINISHED!
1. Prologue

Spirited Back to Halloween: Hirac's Return

The probably forgotten sequel to "Spirited Away on Halloween", the town begins to fall apart when mysterious circumstances awaken an evil force...

PROLOGUE

Lock, Shock, and Barrel had never been in this room of the treehouse before. Their ball had fallen through the roots of the tree and knocked the door open, and they had taken a big chunk of their day in trying to fit into the tiny opening (a lot of butter had come into play), but they had finally managed it.

And they were glad they did, for behind the door was a menagerie of stone gargoyles. Grotesque creatures large and small, recently dusted but beginning to collect some grime once again. The enormous room had only one light source (a skylight of sorts which let in the beams of the moon), but the entire space was illuminated by the silver glow of the moonlight reflecting off of the gargoyles' smooth and perfectly polished bodies and wings. The sea of gargoyles spread out beyond what the kids could guess were the roots of their treehouse, which only made it all the more incredible.

"COOL!" The children raced into the sea of monsters, weaving in an out of the tightly packed statues as they made their way towards one central gargoyle which stood taller than all the others...

&&&

At the same time, at Jack's house, Jack and Sally were both undertaking the perilous job of cleaning out The Pumpkin King's many cabinets. They had gotten past Stage 1 (clean out every single cabinet) and were now on Stage 2 (sort out all the crap that came out of the cabinets). Sally sat on Jack's bed, papers and books up to her waist, trying to sort through all of the bits of paper and pictures Jack had amassed in the past century. Jack dealt with everything that wasn't made of paper, which consisted mostly of his forgotten keychain collection, leftover Christmas toys, and... a ring box?

Jack startled verbally, pulling a small ring box out of the papers. "What's this?"

&&&

"What's this?" Lock asked his "siblings".

"I dunno..." Shock responded, skipping along the many stone monsters, casting several shadows due to all of the reflections.

"But I like it!" Barrel finished, running ahead to the largest gargoyle, which sat under the sky light. "Ooo..."

&&&

Jack smoothed over the ruffled velvet of the ring box, opened it, and examined the contents: a marble-sized ball, translucent except for what looked like a few strands of red, blue, and gold foil. The way the light shined through it, it looked to be made out of jelly. It rolled freely inside of the ring box, not supported by anything.

The Pumpkin King cocked his eyebrow ridge. "That's odd."

"What's odd, Jack?" Sally asked, turning on her hip and knocking a few stacks of paper over. "Oops."

"I... don't know..." Jack titled the box, letting the jelly ball roll to the side. A sense of apprehension tugged at his breastbone, warning him of something (but he didn't know what). "But I don't like it."

&&&

"This one's got junk written on it!" Barrel screamed, calling the other two children to his side. "Look, look, written in the dirt, it says 'Oogie was here'. You think Oogie took care of the gargoyles?"

Shock paused, standing to the right of Barrel. "I didn't know you could read."

"Oogie Boogie didn't take care of anything," Lock popped his mask out of his pocket and smacked Barrel with it. "Stupid!"

"Well, maybe, this was the old furniture before we moved in?" Barrel suggested again.

Shock then smacked Barrel with her mask. "No, stupid, Oogie said the house always looked like it did, 'cept it used to be smaller, 'cause the tree grew!"

The idea of independent thought escaped Barrel's head, and he smiled vacantly. "Okay..."

Lock noticed more words carved into the calf of the largest gargoyle's leg, but since he couldn't read them, he ignored them. "Man, these things are cooooooool..."

&&&

Sally stumbled off of the bed, knocking over many other stacks of paper and books and a few breakable Christmas toys before finally reaching Jack, who was emersed in the jelly ball. He eyed it over her friend's shoulder. "Ew... it's _shiny_..."

"It looks like it's about to burst," Jack noted, noticing the strange bulged manner of the jelly ball. He felt his index finger being drawn towards it.

"Ew!" Sally step back a few steps, knocking even MORE stuff over. "Jack, no, it'll pop!"

Jack didn't listen, because he never does, because he's an oblivious twit, and gave the jelly ball a tiny poke-

**BOOM!**

A wave of energy burst in all directions from the mall, making Jack and Sally's bodies quiver like a sonic bomb had gone off in their stomaches (you'd probably relate to "like a car with its bass turned WAY up, times twenty" a little better, though). There was no sound to accompany the blast, but it did make the couple's ears ring.

&&&

The energy wave rocketed through town on its silent mission, taking creatures by surprise and rattling their jawbones, their ribs chattering within them like castinets. It made some of the smaller monsters feel like they were being turned inside out; large creatures felt a fistless punch to their gut.

The wave passed through the town's mascot, the scarecrow outside of Town Gate, and rocked it off of it's post onto the ground. A light sparked within its pumpkin head, and it began to growl...

&&&

Lock, Shock, and Barrel were, without reason, thrown to the floor, their insides suddenly squished flat into their torsos. The gargoyle room bounced, and the dust rustled free of its perch and rested in the air, obscuring the light and making everything look fuzzy and gray (and really really cool).

"What-"

"Was-"

"That?"

The Terrible Trio rushed out of the room, scurrying to see what had happened, leaving the gargoyles behind to collect dust again.

&&&

Jack slammed the box closed and stuffed it back in the drawer. "Okay..." he crackled, his voice and body still shaking. "Won't be doing that again..."

* * *

Later that night.

* * *

Barrel rushed through the door to the gargoyle room and slammed it behind him, holding a pillow over his mouth and nose to mask his breathing. Lock and Shock's screams could be heard on the other side of the door, along with the thundering footsteps of whatever else was out there. Barrel could still see its fiery eyes, burned into the back of his eyes so deeply that everything else was dark and fuzzy. His muscles tightly locked and what was left of his heart was pounding inside of his ribcage, he held his breathing as there was, literally, a scuffle coming from the other door.

He couldn't hear Lock screaming.

Shock began screaming louder, her voice moving in the direction of the playroom. Barrel gulped as there was a loud thump, and sudden silence.

He dropped the pillow, using his back to hold the miniscule door shut. He strained his ears as best as he could, hearing the slight "thunk thunk-thunk thunk thunk-thunk" coming towards his door. It stopped, and a red light began to shine through the cracks in the trap door. Barrel knew this trick; shining a light near a door, and looking for shadows from the feet underneath. He, silently as he could managed, slid onto a root that jutted out from the adjacent wall. The light moved from side to side; Barrel could hear it hissing, every now and then letting out a loud cough.

It seemed like hours. But the lights finally went away. Barrel snuck off of the wall and through the gargoyles, heading for the one thing that would provide him with any security; the leader-goyle. He was practically in tears by the time he reached the central gargoyle, collasping into its lap and clasping it's leg like a teddy bear.

Yet something didn't feel right under his fingers. He rubbed its calf lightly; was it chipped? He slipped himself behind the gargoyle's leg and read the carved, ancient writing.

"For it is our pledge, as gargoyles under the jurisdiction of King Jack I, to protect all citizens under Halloween skies, standing on Halloween soil, and breathing Halloween air to the first and foremost of our powers, til our wings split and our hooves run bald. Til our skin chips and our horns go blunt, so we are at servi..."

And the rest was gone, rubbed out over the passage of time.

Barrel sniffed, the words of security beaming a sense of warmth and joy into his chilled heart. He looked into the black, vacant eyes of the gargoyle, thinking somewhere in his heart that it could hear him. "Your leg said you would protect me. That thing got Lock and Shock!" he breathed as he leaned into the stone pectorals of the beast, speaking as if he was proving to himself that it was true. "You can't let it eat me! You've gotta help me!"

Barrel had no idea where the hand came from, but it picked him up and stuck him on the gargoye's shoulder. He heard the noise of stone against stone rubbing together, unable to see much through the swirling dust and dim moonlight. There was a sudden rush of wind, and when his vision finally cleared, he was in the sky, flying up and away from his beloved home.

He grabbed the first thing he could reach, a wing muscle. Happy that he was steady, he turned his head to see the face of the gargoyle he had been talking to staring towards HalloweenTown Hall.

"Don't worry," it spoke.

Barrel promptly fainted. The gargoyle caught the pudgy boy in one hand and handed him off to his fly-mate, quickly taking his rightful place at the front of the flock. He, being a bit on the dramatic side, finished his statement to himself.

"We know exactly what to do."

Rough prologue, story coming... if I feel like it. You guys might not care.


	2. Spirited Away on Halloween 2: Hirac's Re...

Spirited Back to Halloween: Hirac's Return

Now wer're actually in the story, not just the set-up. I must warn you, I'm doing this on impulse, and I don't really have a plan on how the story's gonna progess, but some of my best works were written on the fly. Well, not really, but anyway!

Jack had called a town meeting after he made the entire town bounce (for lack of a better word). He was leaning heavily on his podium; his temples felt like he was being massaged with a power drill. The entire town was in a panic, each individual monster screaming about how the "Boom" had knocked over heirlooms, messed up their projects, made them loose their lunch (it had knocked open the werewolf's rabbit cage), among other things. He directed his gaze to the side of the stage; Sally was standing their, fidgeting the way a bored child would. She noticed he was looking at her and gave him a loving little wave, which he returned with a smile.

Finally, he pounded his knuckles against the podium, knocking everyone back into a resonable roar. Finally reaching the point where he could talk without straining his voice, he announced, "All right, now, I'm very sorry about... well, what happened-"

"What did happen!" The Mayor cried. "I mean, my card castles!"

"Mayor, please!" Jack rubbed his head again. "Now, because I don't know exactly what happened _myself_, I have no way to describe to you what happened, BUT precautions have been taken to make sure that it doesn't happen again."

And immediately the monsters were placated. As they chattered amongst themselves, Jack snickered into his palm, "Yeah, I put it back in the drawer. Ha ha ha." He cleared his throat. "Well, anyway, I am very, very sorry about any inconvience I may have caused anyo-"

"You made me loose my lunch!" cried Sadir the werewolf, making a devil and Louis the cyclops laugh.

Jack sighed and slammed his forehead into his head. Oh, they were idiots... but they were _his_ idiots. "Yes, Sadir, I know."

"And my card castles!"

"Yes, Mayor, I know-"

The witches raised their hands. "And our favorite drinking glasses!"

"Yes, Poppy, yes, Sadie, I'm perfectly aware-"

Pop. Jack felt something drop into his pocket. He jumped, patting his left breast inconspicuously. There was something there that he, obviously, hadn't put there. As the townspeople chittered on, Jack opened his coat and dug into the pocket, pulling out-

He stuffed it back into his coat. "Holy- Sally!"

Jack slipped back into the side of the stage, pulling a curtain to make sure the townspeople couldn't see him. Taking Sally by the arm, her pulled her back with him behind a support pillar. "Ow! Jack!"

"Sally, look!"

Jack pulled the ring box out of his coat!

"Holy cow!" Sally put her hands over her mouth. "Jack, why did you bring it with you?"

"I didn't! It just- appeared out of nowhere!" Jack stuffed the ring box back into the indoor pocket of his coat. "It just dropped into my pocket!"

Sally winced in surprise and shock. "How could something you stuffed into the back of your cabinets drop into your pockets?"

"I don't know!" Jack rubbed his skull, digging his fingers into his bone. "I can't explain it!"

"Well, go put it back in the dresser!" Sally, in a fit of anger, pushed Jack's shoulders-

**BOOM!**

Another shock wave was sent through the two, less powerful than the first. A scream came from the citizens, and then silence as they proceeded to run out of town hall and panic in the streets. Jack stood extremely still and waited for the shock to pass, and then gripped Sally's shoulders tightly. "Are you all right?"

"That didn't hurt as much..."

Sally pulled open Jack's coat and yanked open a handful of whatever was in his pocket: the ring box (which she took), two snakes, a Christmas cookie, 5 Soules (pronounced souls, HalloweenTown money), a piece of cloth that he used for tears in his coat, a four-leaf clover, a Valentine he was making for Sally, about 3 yards worth of lint, a corner of a poster for the new Constantine movie, an Aquafina bottle cap, and a live toad, most of which fell onto the floor.

Sally stopped and looked at all of Jack's junk of the floor, the ring box still clutched in her hand. "Jack, you pack rat!"

"Well," Jack stalled, "You never know when you might need this stuff!"

Sally opened the ring box and examined the jelly ball; it no longer had that bursting look, but instead looked nicely balanced and was sitting quiet nicely in the box. "It changed... it doesn't look swollen anymore."

Jack thought for a second; he'd hit it twice, and it had shrunk; it might be related, but he didn't pay attention long enough to think about it. Sally had closed the box and stuffed it inside of her collar. "Jack, I'm going to find a thistle. I'm keeping the thing with me, we don't want it to happen again."

"Good idea." Jack softly patted Sally's head.

The feeling came back. That ominous feeling behind his breastbone that warned him of danger; it was pulling him outside. Without saying a word, he turned and ran out the front door.

&&&

Black shadows flew in an ever shifting circle over the HalloweenTown Square, huge wings pumping up and down in near perfect unison. Jack's coattails ruffled in the wind they created; the only sound, since all of HalloweenTown was now in hiding.

All except for ignorant Sally, who jumped to Jack's side and stared into the sky along with him. She was transfixed, hypnotized by the sight of flapping wings and glinting sunlight. "What are those?"

"Gargoyles." Jack shaded his eyes from the sun long enough for his eye sockets to adjust.

"They're beautiful," Sally remarked. Jack placed his fingertips on her shoulder.

"Sally, go inside."

The ragdoll twitched. She turned to Jack, who was still looking into the sky. "Why?"

"Just go inside."

Sally shivered, but had a feeling she couldn't resist any farther. Turning around, Sally snuck back into Town Hall, conviently leaving the door open by just a crack.

Jack stepped back as the black spots moved downwards, the many many monsters landing on various points of his town. Several gargoyles with clawed feet and ram's horns landed on the fountain; hooved gargoyles with long, gorilla arms landed on the stone ground with a hollow, rocky CLANK. Tiny creatures that vaguely resembled Bartholemew the bat boy perched themselves on the tips of fences on the fingers of their wings. They poured onto the ground like rain, the stonework rattling in a resounding symphony of hooves and claws. But the little monsters stayed a distance away from Jack, forming a nice little perimeter away from his bony body. It was two larger gargoyles that landed in front of him.

A thin little ragamuffin of a gargoyle, homely even by their standards, the female was just a little shorter than Sally. She had a flat chest like a man, but wide hips about the length of a microwave. Her emaciated frame could let a person count every little rib in her skeleton, which was 27 due to an accident a long time ago. She had no arms, but long wings identical to a bat's in every way, shape, and form which took place of her arms. Her tiny feet looked far to small to support her weight, but they did, standing on her toes like a cat. A thin, sparse covering of blonde hair was just starting to grow back onto her scalp (although why the hair was missing in the first place was a mystery), although her eyebrows were just little ridges on her face. Very exaggerated cheekbones accentuated her sunken white eyes and a tiny, slim mouth. She stuck out of the black, stone surroundings; her skin was the dark brown of a healthy oak tree.

The male, however, was the boulder gray. He stood two heads above Jack, with vacant black eyes like an animal and huge wings growing out of his back. He curled his thick tail around his double-jointed, rhino-hooved legs, and threw back his head, showing off his small, yet sharp looking horns. Two dog-like ears stuck out of his scalp just above his horns. A deer-esque head with a stunted, simple muzzle sat on a short, thick neck, which was a little off-kilter with his emmense chest. HHe clenched the fists of his beefy arms and relaxed them again, his "skin" crying like scraping stones.

Jack nodded politely, his face blank. "Pyramus."

The larger gargoyle returned the nod. "I was summoned by a small child to an emergency. My children and I are awaiting your orders."

Jack's eyebrow kicked up on his previously stoic face. "Small child?"

Pyramus the gargoyle snapped his fingers, and one of the clawed gargoyles hopped off of the fountain and crawled towards Jack, holding something in his wings. The Pumpkin King's eyebrow just kept getting higher and higher until the tiny-goyle (a nasty little thing with bugging eyes and a cleft lip) dropped an unconscious Barrel at Jack's feet.

At with that, Jack fell apart. He fell to his knees and scooped the boy into his arms, patting his face and pleading the tiny one to wake up. Pyramus touched Jack's shoulder with asausage-like fingerand pushed the skeleton back onto his feet, looking vacantly into Jack's eyes. "He's fine."

Jack was about to speak, but a thought went through his head. His face flashed with shock, then slowly squeezed into itself in disbelief. "Waaaait aaa minute. Where's the other two?"

"There were no other two." Pyramus kept on in a monotone, his posture slightly bent towards his right side. "He did mention something called a lock and shock."

Jack didn't know what to say. He looked at the sleeping Barrel again, his eye twitching. No Lock, no Shock... and the boom. The Pumpkin King ran his hand over his skull, balancing Barrel delicately on his arm.

Pyramus clicked the tips of his wings together. He was getting impatient, and an impatient gargoyle was something that Jack has never experienced and, yet, had the feeling he didn't want to. He turned back to Pyramus, pointing at the gargoyle's face with his first and middle finger together. "Alright, look, there have been a few strange events happening around town."

Finally. Pyramus's tiny mouth began to form itself into a smile; he wanted his orders. "What kind of strange events?"

"I don't know," Jack admitted, breaking eye contact and checking for the jelly ball in his pocket again. It wasn't there, so he continued."But I want you and your... children-" (Jack struggled with the word.) "-to keep a close eye on the town and tell me what you find, if anything. You stay out of the way of the townspeople; we're only three months away from Halloween, and we're already at least two days behind."

Pyramus sighed happily and bowed with exaggerated motions of his wings, the other gargoyles following suit. He stood up straight and, taking the first two "fingers" of his wing, tapped Barrel on the forehead, immediately waking him up. He smiled with a tiny, yet toothy grin. "We are glad to be back in the service of the Skellington family." His smile faded slowly, his ears pointing towards Town Hall. "Your woman is listening from the door."

Jack jerked around; Sally quickly slammed the door on her hand, screamed "OW!", and slammed the door again.

Pyramus could only chuckle as Jack growled in fury and Barrel's eyes spun from the dizziness. He turned to the earthen, female-goyle. "Thisby, let's go."

After mouthing a few orders in whatever language the gargoyles spoke, the flock jumped into the sky, their silouettes disappearing into the moon.

Barrel snapped back into consciuosness. "It _ate_ them!"

DONE! Kinda choppy right now, hopefully I'll get some story going. Notes, notes, notes...

The leader gargoyles are named Pyramus and Thisby, after the tragic couple that Romeo and Juliet are based on.

I put the Soules (alhough I'm pretty sure that I'm not spelling them right) from the Nightmare Before Christmas game that's not coming out until OCTOBER! DANG IT! OCTOBER! I mean, it fits, but's it's FLIPPIN' OCTOBER! Man! ... October!

If you're having trouble picture Pyramus and Thisby, Thisby's got a picture on my homepage on my profile. If the link doesn't work, I'm CharonTheSabercat on Fanart Central, and the picture is "Spooky Things". You'll see Thisby on the right. You'll know what I'm talking about once you see the picture.

Just as a note, I'm watching "Top 100 Scariest Movie Moments" on tv, and people are talking about "oh, this movie scared me", and they're quoting stuff like "Jaws" and "The Exorcist", and I'm thinking "I got this scared when I first watched 'Nightmare Before Christmas'!" I'm serious! Course, I was relatively young, so when the Boogie Man was torturing Santa Claus, I was outta that theatre, man.

Done!


	3. Spirited Away on Halloween 2: Hirac's Re...

Spirited Away on Halloween 2; Hirac's Return

"It ate Lock it ate Shock it ate Lock it ate Shock and then the gargoyles and the-"

"BARREL!"

The tiny one shrinked under the powerful voice of the Pumpkin King. He buried his face in Sally's stomach for a few calming breathes before glancing back at Jack, his eyes rubbed free of tears. "But it ate them!" he squealed, with all the fiercosity but half the volume of his original voice.

Jack rubbed his forehead. "I know it ate them, but _what_ ate them?"

Barrel sunk further into Sally's lap. "_It_ did!"

He could only sigh as Barrel tossed himself into Sally's knees and, miraculously, fell asleep. Heaving a groan, the tired skeleton smalled himself down in the loveseat beside Sally and leaned back his head. His normally spacious sitting room felt uncomfortably cramped, probably because of his millions of books scattered all over the floors in the event of the "Boom". Mostly it was the stress, which sat upon his chest like a suitcase full of the aforementioned books and refused him most of his breath. Sally leaned into the crook of his arm and rested on his side. "This isn't helping, is it?"

"No." Jack could barely be understood due to the weird angle of his neck. "Now we've got a thing that makes the Earth move, a Barrel with no Lock and Shock, and gargoyles everywhere."

"The gargoyles aren't here to help?" Sally gasped, fear gripping her chest for a moment. Those beautiful things-

"They are, but-" Jack sighed again. Sally smiled and relaxed; she felt better knowing that those beasts were on their side. They were lovely creatures, and she had no idea (and thus no reason) as to why she should be afraid of them.

The Pumpkin King sensed her body drooping in his arm, and sat up straight. "Something about those things, it just-" He paused for a second before continuing. "Something about them reminds me of something bad. They're associated with a bad memory, I just don't know which one."

"Really?" Sally stared into her lap, petting Barrel's head like a cat's because he was there. "I kind of have that feeling... but it's not bad..."

Jack noted this and kept talking. "That, and I don't trust them. They work for me, technically, but they don't live in HalloweenTown. I can't control them; they're likely to go AWOL or something."

"Would they?"

... "I don't know. And that's the bad thing."

Jack stood up and began stretching his arms for emphasis. "I mean, think about it. If they decide to kill me, Pyramus has got a solid-stone army of a hundred-something gargoyles under his thumb that follow each and every one of _his_ orders, not mine. Not to ment-"

"Why are you so worried with not being able to control them?"

Jack stopped. Why? Why was he so worried?

But he didn't think about it for long. Something dropped into his pocket. Without pausing, he whispered, "Sally, check your pocket."

Sally hesistated, but opened her pocket and pulled out nothing. "Uh oh."

Soon as she said it, Jack yanked open his coat, reached into his pocket, and pulled out 6 toe bones, a piece of a broken 45" record, a key, three buttons, a big piece of pocket lint, and THE RING BOX. "I DON'T BELIEVE THIS!"

&&&

Having suceeded in waking up Barrel and nearly scaring Sally out of her wits, Jack had decided to chuck the jelly ball and any curse it might have on it into the lake. Sally followed him diligently, anxious herself to see that little thing plop into the water and not resurface; and there, of course, was Barrel, bewildered and sleepy due to the gargoyle's magic. He paused on the edge of the water, tossing the ring box up and down in his hand. "This whole fiasco started with this stupid thing."

"Are you gonna throw something?" Barrel asked between yawns. "Can I throw it?"

"Can _I_ throw it?" Sally growled.

Jack giggled. "No, Sally. This was in _my_ drawer."

And with one mighty heave, Jack tossed the ring box and the jelly ball within it into the-

It stopped in mid-air and whipped back into Jack's hand like a boomerang!

"HOLY COW!" Sally shrieked; Barrel and Jack shared a surprised whelp. The skeleton man growled in anger and threw the ring box into the ground-

BOOM!

Another shockwave went through the universe, rocketing the water out of the lake and soaking the three to the bone (or, in Sally's case, to the twig). Jack was on the verge of shrieking before he heard the screams of HalloweenTown reaching his ears. As he looked up, a swarm of gargoyles began flying towards town; he could hear something roaring, but he couldn't recognize it as anyone he knew.

He ran.

&&&

Everyone thought it was the scarecrow from outside of town at first glance, but once it opened its mouth and swallowed Dolby the cyclops, no one cared about anything but getting their butts INSIDE! With a group scream, the monsters rushed away from the bestial scarecrow which was running around on all fives (he had another leg in between his other two). Poppy the witch hopped onto her broom and zoomed into her cauldron, just barely missing the firey breath of the attacking monster.

Bartholemew the bat boy wasn't as lucky as most; he had a set of pumpkin fangs around his tiny frame before he knew what was happening to him. His wings were pinned to his sides, and his arms and legs were too weak to do anything against the stony teeth of the scarecrow. It was like an oven inside of the scarecrow's mouth, and Bart began to sweat in both fear and heat.

The scarecrow threw back his head, ready to swallow, but his eyes caught sight of a flock of black wings flying towards him. One jump, and he landed on the arching neck of the central fountain, barely avoiding the powerful punch of Pyramus.

"Get him!" Pyramus roared in a gargoyle dialect. "Avoid the head, you might hit the boy!" Pyramus landed and thundered towards the scarecrow, ramming him off the fountain and onto the ground. Bartholemew's head flopped onto Pyramus's ear.

"Hi, Grandpa."

"Stay still, Bartholemew." Pyramus hooked the scarecrow onto his wing and threw him into the air where many tiny gargoyles, including Thisby, began grasping him with their feet and pulling him apart. The scarecrow's simple eyes darted back and forth wildly; with a swing of his arm, Thisby and three other gargoyles were suddenly swept to the ground, the others letting go of him in confusion. The scarecrow popped onto his feet and began to run off, Bartholemew still in his mouth. Pyramus took to the air and began to chase him-

But then Jack caught up. The Pumpkin King felt a wild impulse and, acting on it, threw the ring box with the jelly ball at the back of the scarecrow's head.

BOOM! Jack could feel a slight shake in the ground, but the scarecrow was suddenly quaking as if he had been struck by lightning. He plunged into the ground, spitting Bartholemew, the cyclops, LOCK, AND SHOCK out of his mouth. The ring box, like Jack "knew" it would, bounced off of the back of the scarecrow's head and into his hand.

The scarecrow turned its face around in a split second, but that second was enough; both he and Jack met eyes and shared the same shock-rememberance "punch" (although Jack didn't know why). Pyramus skidded to a stop, picking up Bartholemew and placing him on his back. By the time he looked up, the scarecrow had bounded into the sky, hopping away with enormous strides until he was no longer visible.

Jack skipped to a stop next to Pyramus, who took his time in rising to his feet. He solemnly focused on the sky, placing the ring box back into his pocket. "What was that?"

"A scarecrow." Pyramus reported. "Three legs, alive. It had eaten the cyclops. We attacked immediately."

Jack paused slightly; not the answer he was looking for, but an answer. "Good." He turned his head to look behind him; several walls and parts of the ground were scorched black, the elbow had been knocked off the fountain, and there was a large hole in the stonework where Pyramus had punched the ground. "Do you have anyone who can fix those?"

"I'll get my children working on it." Pyramus responded, reaching behind his back and patting Bart on the head.

Jack shielded his eyes and looked towards the sun; the jack-o-lantern face matched that of the scarecrow. Again, he felt a strange "punch" of memory returning, for he knew that face. It was anywhere he could think of: Town Hall, a few bookshelves in his house, even stamped into the covers of some books that the children learned to read from. One in particular, he remembered from when he was learning to read from his father, was an alphabet book. K stood for King, and the king in the book was... that exactly same jack-o-lantern face.

Jack spied Sally and Barrel on the edge of town, waiting for the gate to open. He touched Pyramus' shoulder. "Bring Lock and Shock to my house, bring Dolby to the witches, and then find the Mayor. Both of you, meet me at my house."

Jack turned his face again to the sun. "I've got a feeling."

Pyramus, confused, held up his wing and looked through his wing membrane at the sun. His eyes widened in realization.

DONE! Wonky chapter, but MAN! Do I have a fanart to go with this one! Woo hoo! MAN! I can't wait to put it on my homepage!

Hey, favor! You two readers I have so far! Adverise for me, will ya?


	4. Spirited Away on Halloween 2: Hirac's Re...

Spirited Away on Halloween 2: Hirac's Return

Because this is more fun than writing my SD Gundam fic, here's chapter... whichever!

Jack was just about to step in his door when Sally and Barrel rushed past him without warning, throwing him and his ring box to the ground. The jelly ball popped out of the box and rolled along the floor; Jack picked up the box and snapped it around the ball, picking it up without touching it. Stuffing it back in his pocket, he sped to his living room where Sally and Barrel were both lying on the sofa, breathing heavy and shaking.

"What was it!" Sally cried.

"It was the thing that at Lock and Shock!" Barrel shrieked. "I recognized its head!"

"You weren't the only one, Barrel." Jack grabbed Sally's arm and pulled her to her feet. "Sally, did you ever find a thistle?"

Sally, a little dazed, took a few seconds to shake her head.

"Well, hurry and find one. We need all the help we can get." Jack kissed her forehead and pushed her towards the door, Sally obediently following (but not before detaching an ear and leaving it behind to listen).

"Hey, man!"

Barrel's statement caught Jack of guard. He turned around to talk to the boy, but his nose ran into Thisby's forehead and he jumped back into a dresser. "YAH!"

Thisby tried to keep herself from smiling evilly while Pyramus pushed her softly behind him. "The Mayor's stuck in a window."

"G- what?"

Barrel erupted into a rowsing laugh. As Jack stomped past the gargoyles looking for the window The Mayor was stuck in, Pyramus explained, "The Mayor, Thisby, and I are to large to fit through your front door. Thisby and I came through the kitchen window, but The Mayor was too bi-"

"I get the point, Pyramus." Jack opened the door to his tiny kitchen, and there was The Mayor's top half sticking unceremoniously out of the wall. His hat had fallen on the floor, as had his spider tie and ribbon, and he was yelling at the three of them to get back onto his head. "You could have just waited for me to open the back door."

"Jack? Is that you?" cried the panicy public official. "Somebody catch my tie, please, before it gets stepped on!"

Barrel could be heard guffawing from the living room. Thisby reached out a wing and picked up the rampaging tarantula with her two first "fingers", placing it on The Mayor's back. Jack stomped his foot impatiently. "Alright, alright, that's enough! Pyramus, pull The Mayor out of the window and get to my room, we have a problem here."

Jack left almost immediately, heading straight for his old toy chest and one particular book...

&&&

SLAM!

And there it was, the scarecrow with the jack-o-lantern head, his body partially covered by a steriotypical king's robe (red with an ermine trim). The one hand and part of his chest that they could see was made of a dark, grainy wood. He was coiled up into a Napoleonic pose, tipping his crown to whoever happened to be reading the book.

The Mayor jumped, one hand on his panicked face while the other pointed to the picture in the book. "That's the thing!"

"Uncanny," Pyramus noted.

"Something doesn't seem right." Jack said, laying his index finger on the book and tapping it with his middle finger. "I mean, now that I've noticed it, I've been seeing this thing everywhere. In all my books, its engraved in the stonework on some of the buildings-"

"The sun," Pyramus reminded.

"It's part of the sun, for crying out loud!" Jack stood up straight and held his head in thought. "He's everywhere, and I have no idea who the heck he is."

Barrel "hmph"ed. "Was he the king before you, Jack?"

"No, my father was the king before me."

"King Jack Skellington the First, inaugurated September 15, 1587, died again on April 17, 1886," The Mayor recited.

Pyramus, Thisby, and Barrel stared at The Mayor in awe. He blinked stupidly. "What? I'm not the mayor just for my good looks, you know."

Pyramus leaned close to Thisby's head. "Hallelujah."

Barrel erupted in a delighted giggle.

The Mayor ignored Pyramus's rudeness and continued. "King Jack Skellington the Second-" He pointed to Jack. "That's you, inaugurated September 15, 1895 to present date of March-"

Thisby held up one of her wings. "There's a gap."

Jack blinked. "You're right."

A sudden silence passed over the room; even the smarter-than-he-let-on Barrel knew better than to talk in a moment like this.

The Mayor tapped his chin. "Hmph, never thought about it."

"Who was king in the gap?" Barrel asked again, on a role with the good questions.

Nobody answered. In truth, no one really remembered anything from 1886 to 1895, not even what Jack's father had died of. The Mayor recited some birth records that he had memorized of some of the younger HalloweenTown citizens, but no minute details were remembered such as how Halloween was celebrated, whether or not there were bumper crops of pumpkins, or anything. The gargoyles were no help, since they had been asleep since 1801 (right in the middle of Jack's father's reign), and all The Mayor did was recite birthdays.

All Jack could do was stand there and wonder, looking at the well-cloaked picture of the man-eating scarecrow that had attacked his town earlier today. The jelly ball beat like a heart in his pocket, pulsating faster and faster as Jack himself became more nervous. Something was out there attacking his town, and he had no idea what to do. He tried to breathe steadily; if he started to panic, then everyone would panic. A lack of order was the last thing he needed in a time like this. He needed to be strong; he needed to be the rock that his people could stand under. On, he meant. His thoughts were completely scrambled.

Where was Sally? Sally didn't get scared easily (more often than not, it was because she didn't know what to be scared of, poor thing). She was a nice little balance; she was always the calm, level-headed one when Jack was going loco and vice-versa. He looked up; Barrel and The Mayor were also starting to twitch unsteadily in the silence. There was nothing more he could do; he would have to send them home. He moved his mouth to begin to speak, but his fear unknowingly closed up his throat and wouldn't allow him to move.

Pyramus raised his wing. "We should go back to our own houses."

Jack nodded in agreement, his voice unwilling to comply.

Pyramus pointed to Barrel with his wing, his large arms staying stiffly by his sides. "He should be taken to the others."

"I'll get him." Thisby waved Barrel over to her side and lifted him onto her shoulders.

"I'll just, um..." The Mayor began to back away. "I'll go out the back door..."

The Mayor waddled his way away from the the odd huddle of monsters towards the back door, the only door to the outside that he could fit through. Pyramus took Thisby in his arms and nuzzled her nose with his muzzle before setting her loose. She slipped past him on all fours and, still carrying Barrel on her back, jumped through the kitchen door and out the window.

Pyramus clasped his hands behind his back and faced the Pumpkin King. "You're worried."

"I don't know what to do." Jack admitted.

Pyramus stepped past him, his stone feet echoing on the hardwood floor. He picked up Sally's ear from a flowerpot. "Your woman likes to eavesdrop."

"What the-?" Jack snatched Sally's ear from Pyramus' hand.

"I don't blame her." Pyramus explained. "You don't want her to talk to us."

Jack sighed and tucked Sally's ear in his pocket. "She'd worry. She doesn't need to know about stuff like this."

"You don't trust her?"

"I don't trust myself." Jack rubbed his eyes. "I don't even know what that means, just... go home, Pyramus. Step up guards at every town gate."

Pyramus bowed respectfully. "I am at your service."

Jack nodded.

&&&

He looked onto the town out of his window, letting the gentle breeze tease his face. The jelly ball was still beating like a heart under the folds of his coat, but now that he had taken the coat off it was nothing but a little pulsing bump that happened to be tucked into the depths of his closet. The gargoyles began to flock above town, Pyramus leading the wa-

Jack stood up straight. That wasn't Pyramus in the lead. It was a different gargoyle, and the others were chasing it. As the true Pyramus' silouette stuck the rogue gargoyle, a jet of fire shot out from the renegade's head!

"It's back!"

DONE!

Gotta start working on my SD Gundam fic again, no notes now. Later, bye!


	5. Spirited Away on Halloween 2: Hirac's Re...

Spirited Away on Halloween 2: Hirac's Return 

Guess who's back, back, back? Back again-gain-gain? Hirac's back, back, back. Tell a friend, friend, friend. Guess who's back, guess who's back, guess who's back, guess who's back, guess who's back, guess who's back...

Jack grabbed the coat with the jelly ball and flung it over his shoulders as he flew out the door, his legs pumping as fast as they could. He found out soon enough that running would be hard; his town was in the middle of an earthquake, and each stone he stepped on bucked like a bronco every time he put his weight on it. He jumped to avoid a piece of falling fence and landed on his shoulder, grunting as the town cat took refuge in his ribcage.

Which reminded him!

"ZERO!" Jack bounced onto his feet, scared enough to keep his balance in the rumbling landscape. "Zero, here boy! ZERO!"

Nothing. The cat still hiding in his chest, Jack began to run once again, aiming for the main town gate. The two witches zoomed past his head, and right afterwards the night sky turned orange with the fiery breath of the pumpkin headed gargoyle. The jelly ball pumped under his coat pocket, squeezing itself against Sally's ear. Jack held his chest and slunk through the gate to town, heading for the stoic Moonlight Hill. The flock of gargoyles flew overhead, still chasing the pumpkin headed one.

But something was different. The bat-bodied monster took a pot-shot with his leg at one of the smaller stone gargoyles, and BOOM! it shattered into a hundred pieces! It was stronger than last time, strong enough to not just fight off the gargoyles, but kill them!

"Oh no!" The Pumpkin King jumped to the top of the hill and turned to his town. The buildings crumbled and fell before his very eyes, several of the citizens finding their way out of town by jumping over the walls. His house, surprisingly, wasn't moving, which made him wonder for a moment why he even left his room.

Without thinking, Jack called out, "PYRAMUS!" The stone giant flew out of nowhere, followed by Thisby, and clenched his teeth around the wooden one's leg!

"Zar!" Pumpkin head kicked out his leg and missed, giving Thisby an opportunity to catch his other leg in his teeth. The pair of gargoyles flapped their wings in unison and began to pull the gargoyle to the ground. Pumpkin head turned and shot fire into Thisby's face, knocking her loose from his leg; and SMACK!

"Thisby!" Pyramus tried to catch whatever piece of his mate he could, but in his shock forgot to flap his wings and fell to his feet, the shattered remains of his partner falling to the ground.

"Pyramus, get up!" Jack called. Pyramus's children swarmed around Pumpkin head, but with their "father" down and out in shock, they simply flew around without reason while Pumpkin head lashed out with his legs and smashed them into little pieces.

"Oh, just great!" Jack moaned, his chest tight with worry. The Pumpkin King held himself as a small barrage of stones pelted his face, his stomache turning knowing that they were the only remains of a gargoyle. He tried hard to blink through the dust to see if anything had changed for the better.

Sally was running up the hill towards him! He almost smiled, but once he saw that Pumpkin head was diving towards her with the blinding speed of a hawk, he was gripped with fear again. "Sally, duck!"

TOO LATE! Pumpkin head had caught Sally's waist in his claws and was carrying her away!

And then Jack went numb...

All Pyramus could see at first was a black shadow flying towards Pumpkin head. The black shadow at once began striking out at Pumpkin head with long, sweeping blows which left long scars in the wooden body. Pumpkin head snapped his foot and forced the shadow to the ground, and Pyramus bounded to the shadow's side...

It was a skeleton gargoyle. His legs were reptilian and clawed, the individual finger bones holding the pitch black wings over its fallen body. Even the long, whippish tail was a chain of vertebrae. Pyramus, out of respect, turned the gargoyle onto his back-

"JACK!" Pyramus stepped away from Jack, the broad-chested monster, as he shook his head and jumped back onto his feet.

"Follow me!" The ground still shaking violently, Jack and Pyramus began to run towards the woods. White marble sprang up from the ground around them, nearby stabbing them through the feet numerous times. Pyramus blindly followed Jack as the Pumpkin Gargoyle King reached a door, ripped open a section of the bark, and jumped in.

They landed in a snow drift.

PHEW! Wrote that in, like, ONE SITTING! It's hard for me to write spontaneous situations like that.


	6. Spirited Away on Halloween 2: Hirac's Re...

Spirited Away on Halloween 2; Hirac's Return

That took a while. I'm distracted. Have to do a bug collection. Hate bugs. Hate collecting. Hate getting a late start on school projects. Love writing fanfics. Let's go.

Pyramus popped his head out of the snow, shaking away the small mountain of ice crystals that had piled onto his head. Jack's head appeared next to his wing, the Pumpkin King moaning in pain. Pyramus reached out and touched him with his wing. "Are you all right?"

Jack didn't answer, but pulled himself out of his snow-hole with his long, powerful claws. He began to tramp through the snow on all fours, his expression blank and his body sinking into the snow with every step. Pyramus studied his loping walk, and how his wings and tail limpy dragged across the ground...

But nevertheless, he obediently followed, choosing to walk on his hind legs to keep his head above the snow. The cold snapped at his wings, so he tucked them close to his stone body and followed his draggy leader, still unsure of whether or not this was King Jack or it just looked like him. "What are you?"

No answer.

Pyramus clenched his fists and sighed. "What are we doing now?"

Jack kept walking, his face falling into the snowbank at regular intervals.

Pyramus growled in fury, every muscle he could spare burning with rage. They were going nowhere, wandering into a vast expanse of snow without direction (which is the worst thing to go without when walking in a vast expanse of anything). He felt a primal nervousness derived from a lack of a flock around him, especially with the memory of his precious Thisby breaking into a million pieces right before his eyes still wringing his brain into a throbbing ache...

"Get up!" Pyramus, acting on instinct, punched Jack between the shoulderblades, knocking the Pumpkin King back into consciousness... and, subsiquently, back into skeleton form. Pyramus stumbled back in shock; Jack shook his head and focused his vision. "Wha... where am I?"

"Who are you and where are we going?" Pyramus asked, his voice echoing an authority that Jack had heard him use with his "children", but no one else as of yet.

Jack rubbed his head, his memories foggy after he saw Sally getting spirited away. "Pyramus... I... I don't know where we're going... I don't even know where we are."

"It does not matter where we are. Where are we going?"

"...Away. Anywhere away from here."

Pyramus reacted; his body straightened and his eyebrow ridge slipped up his head. "Is that an place?"

"I don't know..." Jack held his head in his hands and fell into the snow. He felt numb, strangely emotionless and yet in the very depths of sorrow. The cat that was hiding in his chest popped its head out and meowed, but the Pumpkin King ignored it. "There's nowhere to go. The town's destroyed, Sally's gone, and we're lost..."

Jack fell headfirst into the snow, the cat inside his chest growling in anger. The jelly ball twitched once, then stopped; Jack didn't bother to acknowledge it. He hadn't felt this terrible since the Christmas incident; a low-pitched, far spread ache that settled in the very marrow of his bones and stuck there. A tear escaped his eye, but he choked back the urge to sob...

But had no problem screaming.

He fell back into the snow and jumped up just fast enough to keep Pyramus' fist from punching through his spine. He began to retreat, the huge gargoyle making sure there eyes made contact. "Pyramus, what are you doing!"

"Show yourself, gargoyle!"

"I am not a gargoyle!" Jack shouted back. "I am not some mysterious beast that hangs around in the shadows that's strong enough to kill anyone in my town, but not strong enough to protect it- WAH!"

Jack dodged the swipe of the gargoyle's fist with a graceful backbend and tried to flip away from attack, but tripped in the snow. Pyramus picked him up by the neck. "Show yourself!"

"What are you talking about!" Jack was surprised to hear himself speaking; Pyramus wasn't holding him tight enough to keep him from breathing. It was just a given (to him) that you had to hold whoever you were fighting tight enough to make him suffer. What confused him more was that Pyramus was calling him a gargoyle! "I'm not a gargoyle!"

"Yes you are! You showed me!" Pyramus threw him into the ground again. "I can see the tracks you left! Show your-"

He didn't finish. Jack the gargoyle flew out of the hole in the snow and caught Pyramus by the hands. With one swift flick of his arms, he had thrown Pyramus to the ground and had clenched his hands around Pyramus' neck, snarling viciously.

Pyramus smiled. "Look."

Jack, being ignorant, decided to look...

"My hands..." Jack stood back up, and then reached down and touched his feet. "My legs... but-"

"I don't know what happened," the huge one explained curty. "All I know is that you are a gargoyle."

"But... I'm not!" Jack scuttled backwards and tripped over his tail. He tried to breathe, but began to hyperventilate. "What's going on?"

"I wish I knew, bu-" Pyramus' face suddenly froze in a perplexed pose, his ears slowly lowering on his head. Jack sat with his head reeling, confused and dizzy and still much larger than he could ever remember being before. The stone gargoyle shook his head. "I know."

"You know?" Jack shifted his weight and made himself comfortable, his toe bones sprawling in the snow. "Know what?"

"I know..." Pyramus pointed to Jack. "You were made half-gargoyle by a spell."

It was Jack's turn to be confused past all reason; he gave up trying to emote in confusion and collasped in the snowy background. "That's the last thing I needed to hear."

"You were made that way..." Pyramus stated, as if he was learning all of this at the exact moment he spoke it. "By the king before you..."

"My father never did anything to me," Jack disagreed, not moving from the snow. "Literally. All he did was read his books and go to wor-"

"Your father was not the king before you."

They heard the "WHAT!" all the way in St. Patrick's Day.

"I don't know who it was," Pyramus monotoned, holding one of his horns. "But it wasn't your father..."

Jack stood now, dumbfounded in his clawed feet and the snow. His jaw hanged open slightly (hanged his a word). The cat in his chest was sound asleep now, bored out of its mind. "You... are... kidding."

Pyramus shook his head.

Jack smacked his forehead; most of his anger either distilled or taken out on Pyramus. "This sounds like those stupid 'fanfictions' Charon makes me read..."

Pyramus shook himself back into sense. "I am sorry..."

They stood in silence for a while, Jack absentmindedly whipping his wings about just to see if they worked. Pyramus finally spoke up. "I am sorry you are angry at me... We must go back to HalloweenTown."

Jack sighed. "Why?"

"Because we are gargoyles." Pyramus recited. "When there is nothing left to fight for, fight for the fight."

Jack gave him a puzzled look, which Pyramus had once himself given his grandfather when being given this information for the first time. "It is better to die knowing that you were fighting for your cause than to live and explain to everyone how you were the coward who ran away."

The Pumpkin King held onto his wings and sighed... something inside of him thought that bit of advice was appealing. But still... there was no reason. HalloweenTown was a lost cause... everyone was gone... his chest pounded with Sally's memory and the fact that the pumpkin head might have eaten her...

A gust of wind whipped past his nose; he smelled cakes and pies!

His heart sprang into his throat! CHRISTMAS! "Pyramus, we can get help from Sandy!"

"Who's Sandy?" Pyramus asked.

Jack, in his joy, changed back into a skeleton and began to run towards the smell (which he now barely detected without his gargoyle nose). "He's our way out of this mess! We'll amass an army of elves and reindeer and we'll take back HalloweenTown..."

He slowed to a snails pace. He smelled something else; fire.

DONE!

One sitting write again. Sorry if it's hokey. More to come after I update my Thunderbirds fanfiction.


	7. Spirited Away on Halloween 2: Hirac's Re...

Spirited Away on Halloween 2; Hirac's Return

This took a while. I was working on something else.

The gingerbread homes were blackened beyond recognition, many of them still smoldeirng from whatever had caught them on fire. A narrow cobblestone street was visible underneath the lake that was now ChristmasTown; the melted snow was not helping to put out anything that happened to be on fire. The central Christmas Tree was gone, the trunk grooved like it was bitten off by a set of giant teeth. There was no sign of life, only the faint whistling of wind through the cracks in the wreckage.

Pyramus slowly entered town through the main gate, his feet "plop"ping in the water with every step. Jack followed (stunned, but still aware), but did not pick up his feet enough to stir the water. Pyramus raised his head and sniffed deeply through in nose, exhaling with an ashy cough. "I can't smell anything but smoke," he hoarsely replied.

"What happened here?" Jack stared stunned at the soggy, scorched roofs of the buildings; now that he concentrated, his ears could just barely hear three recurring notes from the carousel (the first three notes of "Jingle Bells"). From the sound of it, something was jammed in the motor, preventing it from playing any farther. "This was Christmas... so peaceful, so innocent-"

"So destroyed."

Jack snapped around. "This is not the time, Pyramus!"

Pyramus startled, then relaxed himself. "I doubt your plan will work now."

Jack rubbed his head, a nice numb feeling running through his skull. For now, he refused to believe that Christmas was destroyed; it was as if a close relative had died, and he simply refused to acknowledge it true.

Ding ding ding... ding ding ding... ding ding ding, went the carousel. The first three monotonous notes of "Jingle Bells", one of the more annoying of the Christmas carols (in Jack's opinion). Each "ding" shook Jack's jawbone more, his teeth clenching and clenching more and more with Every Single Note-

"What's doing that!" Jack roared (Pyramus jumped up and back three feet in shock). Jack tore through the street and, miraculously, found the carousel. He stepped onto the platform and, finding the door, tore open the middle pillar and searched through the gears for the offending "monkey-wrench"-

It was an elf! An itty-bitty elf, too, almost too small to be noticed. Jack picked up the small child, a boy, and pulled him out of the cogs, smoothly out his clothes and dusting away the ashes as if he were a precious gem. Little tufts of blonde hair stuck out from his elfen cap, most of his clothes burned to a dismal brown. "Oh no.. Pyramus, come see!"

Jack patted the elf's hand softly while the gargoyle craned his head over Jack's shoulder. "Come on now, wake up!"

"_Is_ it dead?"

The elf-child coughed, making both of the men jump. "Fire..."

&&&

The single word was enough to cement Jack and Pyramus' resolve to return to Halloween (that, and my writer's block was kicking in again). The Pumpkin King and his servant gargoyle found their way through the forest of holidays and managed to sneak partway back into Halloween before Pyramus pointed out that they didn't have a plan.

"I'm tired of making plans, Pyramus..." Jack admitted, keeping his concentration on the roots of the trees as to not notice his soggy wet feet and the fact that he now had a cat AND a child elf sleeping in his usually empty ribcage. "I don't know what happened to my town, or even if it's still there. You're the warrior class of Halloween, you figure something out."

"I can't," replied Pyramus, barely exerting any effort to keep up with the Pumpkin King. Rather that try to avoid the tree roots underneath them, he instead kicked them up out of the ground as they tried to trip him, leaving a rather obvious trail of uprooted roots and angry trees behind him. His not-often-used mind spun as he considered Jack's words. "I'm a warrior class?"

Jack stopped for a second, surprised at himself. He placed his middle finger on the bridge of his nose and tapped his skull with his index. "I have no idea where that came from. Please, ignore that statement."

Pyramus pointed to Jack's hand with a wingbone. "What spell are you trying to cast?"

"Hm?" Jack noticed that he was doing the gargoyle wing-bone gesture that Pyramus had used with Barrel and jumped. "Ignore _that_ too, Pyra-"

He gave up in mid-sentence and growled, leaning his back against a tree. "What's going on here? You seem to be comprehending this better than I am."

The gargoyle shrugged. "I know only what I am allowed to know."

The jelly ball gave a light flutter in Jack's pocket. The exhausted skeleton reached in and pulled out a handful of lint, four thread spools, Sally's ear (his eyes twinged with tears, but he sniffed and held them back), a rat's tail, the REST of the aforementioned rat, a blade of dead grass, MORE lint, gum wrappers, a half-eaten Snickers heart that was covered in dust, and the ring box with the jelly ball in it.

He put everything that wasn't a jelly ball back in his pocket. "I've got to try and not reach so deep."

He gave the box a good shake, noticing that the earth moved as he did it. "Pyramus, you know this all started when I poked this thing, right?"

"I do now."

Jack was beginning to get annoyed with his friend's overly-accepting natur- He called Pyramus his friend. Jack humped to himself; odd that he should do that, because not only was Pyramus a gargoyle (which he simply had a natural fear of for whatever reason), but he was an overly-agreeable, unexciteable, overly-muscled lump of rock that did whatever Jack told him to. Jack had never found this more annoying in his life!

Jack went out on a limb and grabbed Pyramus's shoulder, and the larger gargoyle flinched. "Pyramus, doesn't that sound odd to you? Think about it: something bad always happened after I hit the ball, poked the ball, tried to throw the ball in the lake. Don't you think that's a little more than coincidental-" (Pyramus began to open his mouth, but another thought entered Jack's head, and he interrupted). "And Pyramus, so help me, if you say anything to the effect of 'I do now', I will find a way to change into that gargoyle thing I was and rip your spleen out through your throat!"

And now he was shaken; Pyramus stepped back, his ears lying flat against his head. His large eyes widened in shock, his nostrils flaring and his fingers clenching. His mouth was obviously struggling to speak, but words seemed to have left his head entirely at that point.

Nevertheless, Jack kept talking to, or more like scolding, Pyramus. "You are the single strongest thing I know, and yet you act like some 90 lb. suck-up whose afraid of getting his face beat in! Form an opinion! Tell me; do you think this is odd, or not?"

A few minutes passed without Pyramus saying anything, his bestial face contorting in thought before Jack gave up and walked away. Having completely forgotten about the ball in his struggle to form an opinion, Pyramus could do nothing but follow.

&&&

They stepped back into HalloweenTown, but thought they were taken somewhere completely different somewhere along their travels. The sky was a shade of blue so light it was painful, almost white (much like the scenery). The ground, the trees, the plants, everything was the color of Greek marble treated white Clorox bleach, the sun distilled into an almost flourescent glow. Small buildings that resembled attorney's offices were spread out from the still-black forest to the horizon. Jack and Pyramus shield their eyes from the brightness and tried to look farther, but their vision fuzzied as they tried to find anything in the distance. There must've been a fog rolling in, because the wind would blow every now and then and disturb the fuzzy-ing, revealing what looked like castle turrets in the sky.

Jack stood aghast. "What did they do to my _town_?"

The two men dared to step into town, leavin the twisted forest behind.

* * *

DONE! Notes time;

Sorry about the long wait, but due to bug collections and upper respiratory tract infections, it took a while. Getting blood drawn hurts, did you know that? Especially when, for whatever reason, the nurse can't find the stupid vein! (holds elbow and whimpers)

Going on my friend Double F's (old) advice, I'm gonna start putting a line between the end of my story and the notes.


	8. Spirited Away on Halloween 2: Hirac's Re...

Spirited Away on Halloween: Hirac's Return

I know, I know, I renamed it "Return of the King". I don't feel like changing it halfway. My fanart for the story is increasing by the second if you want to check it out. It's under my fanart profile, towards the back couple of pages.

One main road ran through the middle of the starched-white town, flanked on both sides by a river of water, suds, and cloud-gray articles of clothing. Every now and then, a bridge would lead across the river of washing fluid on both sides to the attorney's office-like buildings. Jack and Pyramus picked up their pace once they saw something other than an office jut out of the horizon; once they got close enough, they saw it was a pair of giant marble statues of Pumpkin Head.

The statues sat up on pedestals that came up to Jack's knee, the statues themselves stood at their tallest at 27 feet. In one statue, the Pumpkin Head held his head towards the flourescent sky, one of his long arms stretching towards the heavens. In his palm he held a small, plump dove, which was compacted into a tiny little ball of bird, its tiny eyes staring off into space. The other statue, across from the other one (following the symmetrical theme of "Halloween" Town), had its chest puffed out in a triumphant manner, its middle leg bent slightly to support the odd balance of the statue. The second Pumpkin Head held one hand to its chest in a fist.

Jack charged the nearest Pumpkin Head, soon finding himself in gargoyle form in Pyramus' powerfull armlock. The large one snarled in his ear and jerked the skeleton-goyle's arms in punishment. "Control yourself, Jack, or we're doomed to failure."

Jack snarled in hatred at the stone Pumpkin Head, whose arm was extended to the sky in an almost angelic manner. "What has this monster _done_! Thinks he can _ruin_ my town and _replace _it with this symmetrical _monstrosity_, and then make himself out to be some kind of _god_!"

Pyramus shook his head, sighing mournfully. "It's scary."

Jack wasn't paying attention. His eyes were scanning his once-beloved home, where all of his memories once stood. Now, instead of the grays and blacks he had known for all of his life, all he saw were those ugly, white, dull, polished to perfection-

Wait a minute. That was it!

He relaxed in Pyramus' clutch, the stone gargoyle reading the signal right and letting go. "Wait a minute, that makes sense."

Pyramus' ears twitched. "What makes sense?"

With a shake of his bones, Jack had calmed down enough for his body to change back into his normal form. "Look at this place. It's perfectly clean, open, symetrical." Jack spread out his arms to accentuate. "Whoever took over my town is some kind of evil dictator who's bent on making a Utopia!"

"Huh?"

Jack got a strange feeling that he was losing his thick-headed friend, so he stopped. "Never mind."

&&&

They got over the statues eventually, and good thing too, because they were everywhere. As they marched deeper into "town", the statues became more and more frequent, almost to the point where Pyramus had trouble seeing past the thick forest of marble Pumpkin Heads. Jack was beginning to feel a little lost; the cat, the elf, and the jelly ball were still in his chest, not even a flutter coming out of them. His mind was sufficiently numb after he nearly tore the marble statue of Pumpkin Head a new one, but thoughts of home began to stir in his brain once again, and it made his heart ache. The pumpkin sun, the constant (if imperfect) smiles, the comforting embrace of the dark, the comforting embrace of...

Jack clutched his chest and held back the tears once again. He didn't want to think of what had happened to Sally, wherever she was. He rubbed his throat in a worried way, hoping to push back the welling tension locked in his chest. He mentally fussed at himself, _Don't think about it, Jack. The more you think about it, the more you'll panic. Besides, you need to be there for Pyramus, he'd fall apart if you did._

Pyramus' clanking feet suddenly stopped.

Jack turned around to see Pyramus' head lowering, his wings tucked, and his ears back. "Is something wrong?"

Pyramus shook his head. "It is none of your concern."

Jack sighed and backtracked until he was next to the gigantic gargoyle and rested his elbow on the monster's shoulder. Pyramus' eyes were closed, and his breathing was noticeably controlled. His tail sagged and brushed against the ground, making a soft scraping sound whenever it moved. Jack patted Pyramus' head as if he were a dog. "Pyramus, stop. This is about all your little gargoyles, isn't it?"

Jack had no idea where that question came from; he didn't really know, or care, about Pyramus' family. The fact that Pyramus actually nodded made him jerk back in surprise. "They are all gone... Thisby is gone..."

It made sense. Jack stroked Pyramus' head and patted his horns in a comforting way. "Pyramus, I know it's hard. But you have to be strong. Think about what they would want you to do. They'd want you to be strong and fight for them, wouldn't they?"

Another nod.

Jack smiled, finding his own words more comforting to him than to Pyramus. "There. Now, think about it; they can't all be dead, can they? And we can always find you another Thisby-"

Pyramus suddenly rose, holding his wings out and craning his head above Jack in an imposing manner. "And if I told you that _your_ woman could be replaced, what would _you_ say?"

With a gulp, Jack nodded and backed away. The guilt settled into his stomach. "You're right... wrong choice of words... I'm sorry."

The stone gargoyle sniffed his disgust and tossed back his head. Almost as soon as he did, his eyes snapped up, his ears quivering. His muscles tensed as he leaned back into a fighting stance. Jack startled and turned around, his bones swelling as the gargoyle him threatened to surge out-

He couldn't believe his eyes!

"ZERO!"

Jack wasn't prepared for the teeth.

&&&

Jack and Pyramus found themselves running for their lives, a mutated Zero hot on their tails. _This_ Zero had grown several feet from head to foot, being the size of a wolfhound by this point and still growing as he chased them. Out of his cloth-like body he had "grown" four leg-like extensions (stretches of cloth, or whatever Zero was made out of, which curved into little paws at the end) which were now pounding the ground after our two heroes. He had also grown several sharp fangs which had already torn away part of Jack's coattail.

Jack couldn't help but call out to Pyramus, who was running three feet in front of him in order to smash away Pumpkin Head statues. "You'd think the town was enough, but now he's gone after my dog!"

"What now?" Pyramus called back.

"I don't know!" Jack scre- The jelly ball fluttered in his pocket. "Wait, yes I do!"

In a dazzling feat of agility, Jack leapt up and bounced off of a falling piece of statue, reached into his chest, _pulled out the black cat_, and threw it into Zero's face!

Gratefully, Zero still had the attention span of a garter snake, and quickly took off after black cat. Jack landed on the ground and took to the air as a gargoyle, Pyramus quickly following. They flew upward until they were well out of Zero's sight rang and leveled out, flying blindly into the horizon.

"I swear," Jack began to monologue, "If I ever find that idiot who did this to my town, I am going to have his head in a silver pie plate!"

"Do you think he did that to the rest of Halloween Town?" Pyramus asked.

"We can only hope not," Jack called. He turned his head as Pyramus began to straighten up in the air. "Pyramus, why are you-"

BRCRUNCH!

Pyramus landed vertically on the castle wall, catching the Pumpkin King by the neck just before he fell. "You need to watch where you are going."

Jack sighed in disbelief. "You'd think doing that once was bad enough..."

&&&

They had landed on Pumpkin Head's main castle wall, knowing that because the entire castle screamed "PUMPKIN HEAD" from its orange stained glass windows to the pumpkin vine engravings on the front door. Huge flags fluttered overhead bearing the Pumpkin Head's visage, along with several smaller banners of gray and black. Despite the gloomy flags, the castle itself was adorned with the brightest of colors; it looked so natural, too, almost as if the hues had been soaked into the stonework. The fortress seemed to be carved out of a solid stone, because there were no seams or creases indicating brick laying.

It sure didn't make the gargoyle's job any easier, though. Jack decided that the best way to go would be inside, so he tried every single window he would come across; most of them were locked, and one of them fell off the hinges in his hands to reveal a room with no other doors (naturally, they didn't go inside that one). Pyramus and Jack kept climbing the outer walls, slithering like lizards over turrets, windows, and mantles where gargoyles should have rested.

Pyramus settled himself on a ledge, surveying the landscape, and Jack wiggled next to him and tried to balance himself on the one corner that Pyramus' bulk did not occupy. "Well, Pyramus, we're running out of sides. North, West, and South, all of the windows were locked."

The gargoyle sniffed the air delicately, sneezing before continueing. "The air, inside the castle. I can smell my children."

"You can what?" Jack quipped.

"They're inside!" Pyramus rocketed up the wall, leaving Jack to catch up. He bound like a rabbit straight up the side of the castle wall and up one of the flagpoles, stopping at the very top of the highest one. Knowing he wouldn't fit, Jack found a different pole and began to shimmy up the side, only to trip on his toes and fall flat onto the ceiling.

"What are you doing!" screamed Jack.

Pyramus didn't answer him. He took a breathe and-

Jack wasn't surewhether to cover his ears or to sing along. Out of that oafish gargoyle's throat came the eeriest of noise, a sort of cross between a French horn and a whale's song. All of Jack's senses left him for a bit, for the strange wail of the gargoyle was so loud that Jack could feel the elf in his chest wake up and scream in terror, but he couldn't hear it.

When Pyramus stopped, Jack had little time to recover before a trapdoor opened below him and he dropped into the castle, Pyramus diving in after him.

DONE! One day- well, actually two days of typing to write this one.

Not too proud of this one. Could've done better. But it was the best I could do under such short notice. I want to move onto the STORY, dangit!

No notes I can think of.


	9. Spirited Away on Halloween 2: Hirac's Re...

Spirited Away on Halloween 2: Hirac's Return

Well, we're getting on. This chapter will make this fic, complete or not, my longest to date. I'm glad, because I'm trying to mix in some elements of symbolism and metaphor in here, along with some character foils and parallels. I'll give you this one, because I doubt most readers could pick this up (hey, if I wasn't writing this thing, I couldn't pick this up).

Parallels: Jack and Pyramus. Both in a similar situation, waking after a long "sleep" only to suddenly find themselves alone in a strange place they thought they knew. Both have lost the stabilizing force in their lives (Sally and Thisby) and much of what they should be fighting for (HalloweenTown and the gargoyle "children"). Both Jack and Pyramus are trying to be stoic, strong, and independent in this time of crisis when, in reality, they're both on the verge of falling to pieces on the inside. Thought by eachother to be strange and incapable of working with, each respects eachother's power over the other and have formed and unintentionally dependent truce in which neither of them can escape from until their singular goal is met.

And there you go. That's "Cliff Notes" level stuff there. You can do this too if you pay attention in English class.

* * *

Jack landed heavily on his back, Pyramus bouncing off of his sternum before he could fully collect his thoughts. "Ow..."

"Jack, look out!"

The Pumpkin King opened his eyes just in time to see a set of teeth lunging for his throat. Faster than he could think, he snapped his legs up and kicked the attacking gargoyle out of the way, flipping himself onto his feet in the process. Pyramus stood beside Jack as he began to stand, his body tense and ready for action.

"What was that?" Jack asked.

Pyramus took a second to respond. "My son, Glaucus."

Jack, ignoring the statement because he didn't know Pyramus' son that well, took a second to look around. A simple hallway, about 20 feet wide, with hardwood floors and Victorian wallpaper. Red doors were evenly spaced on the wall on his left side, the opposite wall being pure stone and a few stain glass windows. Down the center of the hallway ran a carpet, which was the only thing that was keeping Jack on his feet right now (he guessed that if he tried to walk on the hardwood as a gargoyle, he would slip). Overall, a fairly normal hallway; in fact, Jack noted that this was one of the few places that Jack had felt safe in a long time.

Pyramus shared that safe feeling, aparrently, for he strode to his son's side and began to pick up the small gargoyle. Barely larger than a housecat, Glaucus's once pot-belly had been reduced to an emaciated shadow of a stomach, his ribs protuding from his "skin" with an alarming amount of clarity. His wings were small and shriveled; his face, which had always been a little skeletal (Glaucus had taken a lot from Thisby's side of the family) was now indestinguishable from his skull, his tiny fangs melding into his jaw without a hint of a lip anywhere. His hands were now whethered claws, his feet hawk-like talons.

Pyramus held out of Glaucus' small hands in his own, resting the small monster in his lap. "What have they done to my son...?"

"Are you sure he's-" Jack paused halfway through, thinking he might say something offensive again. "How do you know-"

"He smells the same." Pyramus held the gargoyle close and stroked his skin. "His body is segmented, but he has the same dimpled skin. He got that from his mother."

Pyramus put the small gargoyle on his shoulder and stood erect, stretching his back. "Besides, he responded to my bellow. He's my son."

"Bellow. Uh huh." Jack gave Glaucus a sympathy stroke on the head. "Well, we need to think of a plan now that we're inside."

Pyramus nodded, running a long finger down his son's spine. With a snort, Glaucus awoke, his eyes fluttering open with a shake of his head. With a jump, Pyramus held the little one in his arms, Jack smiling despite himself. "Glaucus! My son, you're all right!"

GLAUCUS LET OUT THE LOUDEST SHRIEK IMAGINABLE!

Pyramus immediately dropped his son and covered his ears! Jack growled in agony as his entire skull reverberated, just barely noticing a wave of black mass tearing down the hallways on either side. After a failed attempt to catch Pyramus' attention, Jack jumped to the ceiling and ran down the hallway, upside down, leaving Pyramus behind. He didn't look where he was going, just kept tearing away at the ceiling, running in a straight line until the hallway opened up into a foyer and Jack tripped back onto the ground. He landed on his shoulder, hissing his pain out until a small, screeching demon appeared on his back.

With a twitch of his wings, it had been thrown across the empty room. The black gargoyle shook its head and charged at Jack again, knocking him to the opposite wall with the strength of an 18-wheeler. Jack roared and snapped his tail at the tiny one's head, slashing his face and pounding him into the floor without a second's thought. "I WISH HE WAS GONE!"

With that last word, the small gargoyle vanished, leaving Jack alone.

The Pumpkin King stood shocked for a second, his "eyes" frozen on the empty space between his hand and the floor. He had no idea where those words came from... in fact, the past few moments seemed like a total blur in his mind... nothing... he could remember nothing... and he felt nothing...

Jack fell asleep. As he slept, his body receeded back into his normal, skeletal shape, causing the elf in his chest to get cramped and crawl out from his stomach cavity.

The elf's name was Winky-doo. It wasn't an uncommon name for an elf, almost as popular as "John". Winky-doo considered himself pretty average; sure, he had stolen his share of cookies and bad-mouthed "The Boss" as much as any other elf had, but why did _he_ deserve this special punishment, he wondered. All of his brothers and sisters and mother and father and cousins and aunts and one uncle and "The Boss" and "The Boss' Wife" and the reindeer... but not the snowmen. The snowmen had been spared from the jaws of the fire-breathing wooden man. Why him? Why the snowmen? Why, period? He wondered whether or not he should have been dehydrated and wearing an albatross around his neck. He wondered why that weird thing he saw in his nightmares every now and then decided to pick him up and carry him around until he passed out. He wondered if he shouldn't have hidden in the carousel, and instead should have just let himself be eaten like everyone else did.

Winky-doo wondered this, all the while sitting on the sleeping skeleton's back. He looked at the skeleton man... he did probably save his life, after all... and, it was the weirdest thing: whenver Winky-doo had a nightmare, this thing would apologize to him at the end. Should he say it?

Nah-

Wait.

No.

No?

Nooonnnnnonnnnnnyyyyes.

Wait.

Yeah.

"Thanks, mister."

Winky-doo shrunk back, embarrassed. The skeleton man kept sleeping. Sure that he wasn't being heard, Winky-Doo felt a bit bolder. He lifted his head again. "You... helped me, you know..." He felt like he was going down a very cliche'd path, and he hated cliche's. (Note: somebody whos knows how to do accent marks on the keyboard, please tell me.) "I usually... don't... talk... at all. You... (sigh)... thanks..."

Still asleep.

Winky-doo thought. The skeleton man wished for something to be gone, and then it happened... he guessed. He leaned close to the skeleton man's head. "I wish you were a-hundred percent better."

Jack's head bolted up. "What the-" He turned around, fully focused (but not quite aware), and stared at his bottom. "Where's my tail?"

"Hey!" Winky-doo clapped his appreciation. "You're... um... awake!"

Jack rose to his feet, placing one hand on his head and rubbing it solemnly. His face was totally blank, his eyes open a bit wider than usual. "I could have sworn I was dreaming, and then I woke up-"

"I wished you up!" said Winky-doo, a strange sense of confidence welling up in his chest. "I wished you up, and it worked, and you're awake!"

Jack still wasn't quite "awake" yet, merely conscious. He still stood there, eyes on the ground, hand rubbing his head, and his heart beating... he then remembered he didn't have a heart. Patting the spot where his heart should have been, his fingers ran over a small ring box in his coat pocket-

And it came to him. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the ring box, an eyeball, a- Aaah, GEEZ louise, I know it's funny, but I'm tired of writing it! He pulled out the ringbox and a buttload of other crap, how's that?

(Jack: (insulted) CHARON!

Charon: Fine, fine, I'm sorry... I go a little nuts if my stories get too long/too serious.)

"It grants wishes," Jack recited, placing everything that wasn't the jelly ball on the floor (including the ring box that held it). "It's magic, and it's grants whatever wish it hears..."

"It does?" said Winky-doo. "I wish you knew my name!"

A thought popped into Jack's head: The elf's name was Winky-doo.

"You're name is 'Winky-doo'?"

"IT WORKS!" Winky-doo screamed, throwing his arms in the air. "YEAH!"

:"Oh my Lord..." Jack rested his fingers on the jelly ball. He now understood; the huge "explosions" whenever it was touched, the unexpected wish-granting, the jelly ball was some kind of magical artifact! For a reader, this may seem obvious, but for Jack, it was a huge revelation. He clasped the ball in his hands and laughed his most triumphant cackle to date, nearly scaring Winky-doo back into shock. The first words out of his mouth were "I wish I knew where Sally was!"

Immediately he knew. Snatching Winky-doo up in his hands and stuffing him into his torso again ("Hey!" went Winky-Doo), Jack slithered onto the ceiling and wiggled through the obligatory air vent.

&&&

It was a terribly cramped fit in the air vents, with just enough room for Jack to push his way through with his feet. Oddly enough, the air vents were well lit, although there were hardly any openings for air or light often for what seemed like miles. Jack kept marching through the vents, pausing twice because he got stuck on a nail, but he soon made it to one particularly dark opening into a large, luxurious room...

Jack, still wedged into a tight board-o'-bone in the small vents, fingered the bars of the vent methodically. This was Sally's room... that much, he knew. He did not know why there were no lights on in the enormous space, nor why he couldn't hear anything, not even the slightest ruffle of Sally's stuffing...

His renewed confidence began to fade. He touched a hand to his collarbone in a failed attempt to touch the jelly ball. "I wish I knew where Sally was."

Sally was on her way!

A set of doors flew open, blinding Jack in a burst of light. There was a scream, and the doors slammed shut again, leaving once again a dark room but also a sign of life.

"Ow..."

Jack slammed his hand against the grating. "Sally?"

"What? Who said that?"

Suddenly, everything was pitch-black, even the air vent. Jack gasped in shock, but stayed calm. "Sally, it's me! Jack!" He paused for a response; Sally was shaking, he could tell, but she wasn't talking. She had to recognize him... but, she couldn't see him. But she could hear him!

"My dearest friend," he began to coo, "If you don't mind..."

He twitched as Sally gasped, but continued to sing. "I'd like to join you by your side, where we can gaze into the stars..."

"And sit together..." Sally began, Jack holding his breath. That voice of hers, it was enough to give him chills! "Now and forever, for it is plain-"

They began to sing as one. "As anyone can see: We're simply meant to be."

(Charon: Oh, god, ROMANCE!

Jack: (agitated) Charon, I have been waiting for this scene for the past 5 chapters! You are not going to stick in your little cynical comments and mess it up!

Charon: (sigh) Yes sir...)

Sally reached into the air duct and touched his hand. Jack finally breathed again, pulling Sally's body towards him. A metal gate seperating them still, of course, Jack and Sally could barely stand simply to hold eachother's hands and not touch eachother further. Sally got her face as close to Jack as he could, and he lovingly kissed her nose from lack of anything else to kiss.

"I was so sure you were dead..." Sally admitted. "Or worse..."

"Nothing's worse than being separated from you..." Jack whispered, his eyes brimming with tears.

He went to pull her hand again, but he noticed something. As he pulled on her, her arm would move... but she wouldn't. He ran a finger down one of her stitches and felt, of all things, a leaf! "Sally, your stitches are loose!"

"I know..." Sally gulped and began to speak again, her voice quivering. "Jack, you've got to do something. Hirac's made all of the mo- the cit- our friends into slaves!"

Jack felt the urgency of her word in his chest. He could feel something was up just from the way Sally was talking, and tried to lean in closer. "Who's Hirac?"

"The thing that killed the gargoyles," Sally explained. "Well, he didn't really kill them, but he shattered them and put them back together, made them evil. He's some kind of magic-using beast; he's got half the town under some kind of brain-washing spell."

"Which half?" inquired The Pumpkin King.

"The strong half," she cried in terror. "Everyone strong enough to put up a fight, like the werewolf and the clown, are the ones under a spell. Everyone else is too scared to do anything."

Jack growled under his breath, grasping Sally's hand tighter (and nearly pulling it off in the process). "And that Hirac thing, where do I find him?"

"I'm not sure," Sally whispered. "I've been to a big throne room, though, that's probably where you'll find him if he's anywhere. He's rooted into the ground, he said it was to keep his strength up. He shouldn't be going anywhere." Sally lowered her voice to where it was barely audible. "Jack, he treats me like a toy! He picks me up and tosses me around the room, talks to me like you'd talk to a baby, and the way he looks at me... egh!"

Both Jack and Sally shared a disgusted shudder, neither one knowing what to say.

"Is that why your stitching is loose?"

"Sort of. That's what scares me. He said I was too soft, and that he was going to make me stronger..."

There was a distant slam from the other side of Sally's door. The ragdoll gasped in shock and teased her hand away. "Jack, you've got to rally the townspeople! You can't stop Hirac on your own. Find Pyramus if you can and keep Hirac at bay."

"Pyramus?" Jack startled as the memory of his friend snapped back into his head. "How did you know?"

Sally sounded a bit perturbed as she spoke. "Jack, my ear has been in your pocket this whole time. Don't act like I don't know."

Speaking of which, Jack felt Sally coyly reached into Jack's jacket and pulled her ear back out, tucking it into her collar. He lay dumbfounded, not sure of whether to apologize or just keep quite. He twitched lightly as something brushed past his cheek; it was Sally's hand, caressing his cheekbone. "Jack, stop worrying about me. I know this place better than you do, and I can take care of myself. It's _you_ I'm worried about..."

What did she mean by _that_?"Sally..."

There was another slam, this time closer! A light began to seep out from under Sally's door. The ragdoll pushed Jack's shoulder. "Hurry, get out of here before they see you!"

"But-"

"Run!"

Jack, confused, bolted through the vent without a second thought. Spying a bit of light up ahead, he took what he thought was going to be one big leap to freedom-

And got his chest wedged in the vent, this time firmly STUCK in the tunnel.

**Stuck!**

"No... No, no! Come on!" Jack kicked his feet and clawed at the tunnel in front of him. No matter how hard he pulled, he wouldn't move. An old bout of claustrophobia began to engulf him as the tunnel became darker once more.

**Trapped! **

Screaming came from Sally's room. Jack tried to turn his head around to here, but found he was frozen in place while the sounds of a struggle came from behind him.

**Sally!**

With the crash of a glass vase and a sudden silence, Jack could stand no more! _His_ people reduced to slaves, _his_ comrade-in-arms captured by his own offspring, the love of _his_ life being tortured, _his _kingdom being reduced to nothing, all by some ornament that used to hang outside of the town gate! How could this have happened! He was a _monster_! He ruled a city of MONSTERS, beasts that terrified the very souls out of people's bodys with a mere howl or snarl, why didn't they fight back?

His hands clenched, his teeth nashed, his breathing shallowed, and his mind raced with every single horrible thing that had happened to him, to Pyramus, to Sally...

Sally's words wafted through his mind. _It's you I'm worried about..._

The metal vent burst open! Jack flew out of the hole, fully gargoyle and fully enraged! He tore through a maze of metal tunnels and girders, slashing through wood and breaking through stone as he climbed higher and higher. In his rage, he dug his claws into the walls and shrieked a cacophonous ROAR that shook the very stone he was standing on and a few other things as well...

&&&

Lock trudged through the hallway, his mind blank. His turn to clean the toilets, he reminded himself, or else Hirac would toss him in the furnace again-

REEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRR!

The devil boy was thrown to the ground, his toilet brush landing on his gut and staining his gray uniform. "Ow! Hey!"

Lock immediately jumped to his feet, his fangs bared and tail held high. "Who did that? Show yourself!" He picked up the brush, brandishing it like a sword. "I dare you! Fight like a man!"

Seeing that no one was nearby, Lock began to smile. He felt... renewed. He hadn't felt like this since last Christmas! An energy began to run through his stomach and into his throat, and the devil boy began to laugh.

&&&

REEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRR!

The Mayor dropped his load of laundry, his happy face spinning to the forefront for the first time in a LONG time. His eyes began to narrow menacingly, a sinister chuckle forming in his throat.

&&&

REEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRR!

Sadir the werewolf smacked the washbucket out of the impudent gargoyle's hands. "Werewolfes don't sew, you numskull!"

The frightened gargoyle turned to run, only to run into Mario the Harlequin Demon's belly. He soon found himself swamped by the werewolf, tearaway clown, harlequin, and bass player, all of whom were beginning to laugh demonically. Poppy the witch flew in overhead, holding a boiling kettle of water on her broomstick.

"Eat _this_, pansy slave!" She roared with laughter as the gargoyle saw the boiling water shoot towards his head-

&&&

REEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRR!

The roar stopped the attacking gargoyles just long enough for Pyramus to get away, leaving them to fall miserably behind him. The once-proud Pyramus was now covered with scratches and scars and one more gargoyle, a tall one with huge wings and snake-like appendages for hair. The female assailant chased after Pyramus on all four legs, following his every step as he bounded over the ballroom's huge walls, annoying chandeliers and prominent, tower-like centerpiece. (Sound familiar?)

Pyramus skidded to a stop on the floor. The female gargoyle raised her hand to strike Pyramus, only to have him catch it midair before she could make contact with him. Not missing a beat, she swiped with the other hand (he caught it) and both her feet (his wings grabbed her ankles). She found herself trapped in his grasp.

Pyramus inspected the female gargoyle. Long tentacles with round, pointed heads growing out of her scalp gave her the illusion of having hair made of snakes. Pitch-black, with a well-rounded female figure (albeit with huge hips) and enormous wings, this female had surprisingly hollow cheeks and a flat, almost non-existant nose, not to mention a total lack of eyebrows...

Pyramus counted the ribs on her thin frame. _27_...

Pyramus began to delicately sniff the hyperventilating female, the surprisng she-goyle quickly returning the gesture. His grip on her loosened, and he let her feet touch the floor once again and moved his hands from her wrists to her palms...

The gargoyle hoard flew in through the windows and doors, charging towards the stoic couple-

("QUIET, ALL OF YOU! STAND YOUR GROUND!") The she-goyle shrieked in a dialect of gargoyle, making all of the small creatures stopped in their tracks, confused.

She returned her focus to Pyramus, who was giving her nose one last huff before he pulled back his head. ("I don't believe it...")

Pyramus pulled the she-goyle into a hug, grinning ear-to-ear and purring into the she-goyle's wings. The she-goyle wrapped her wings around Pyramus and grappled his neck, shedding a few tears and trying to keep her breathing steady.

("Who is he, mother?") asked one of the little-goyles.

Thisby pulled away and looked into her oversized husband's eyes. ("He's your father...")

* * *

DONE!

THIS! CHAPTER! WAS! HARD! TO! WRITE! I am going to save this story to disk so if it gets deleted, I WON'T HAVE TO DO THIS CHAPTER AGAIN! MAN, this was hard! You guys know how hard it is to keep a coherent story going for this long! Geez louise!

By the way, I'm going to delete the thing in the last chapter that says quote unquote "Sally's gonna be in this one" because it ruins the shock for future readers.


	10. Final Chapter

Spirited Away on Halloween 2: Hirac's Return

I'm done. I'm finishing the story with this chapter. You can thank Genesis' "The Brazilian" for th- OH! That reminds me! I wanted to look up "Dela" on Napster! And I can get "The Brazilian" while I'm at it! Rockin'!

* * *

Sally struggled against the restraints, but it was no good. Dr. Finklestien loomed above her holding a pair of scissors in his hand, his white lab coat replaced with a dull gray uniform. "Daddy, _please_, why are you doing this?" 

"Don't call me 'daddy', Sally," the doctor responded in a cold, remote tone. "This is a direct order from the king, after all. I can't disobey him."

"That terrible beast isn't your king! _Jack_ is your king!" Sally's head snapped around when she heard a loud "Clunk!" in her ear; Igor was placing a wooden armateur (look it up if you don't know) on a table across from Sally in roughly the same position as he was lying. "What are you doing? Igor!"

"This for you," said the hunchbacked one. "King says you're too soft."

"But- I-"

"Now, Sally," Dr. Finklestien interrupted. "Hush. This is for your own good..."

She saw the scissors coming towards her, and wrenched her eyes shut-

&&&

REEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRR!

&&&

Gargoyle Jack fell through the ceiling after a few more minutes of tearing through the pipework. He found himself in a small, square room that he barely fit through. There was a door one each wall; one door was bare, one had a window in it, one had a sign hanging on the doorknob, and the last was framed by a few thin vines. Jack dug his claws into the carpet, eyes alert and nose twitching. Sally... he could smell her behind one of the doors, but he couldn't tell which one. A few more sniffs, and he- wait, he could cheat, he forgot!

"I wish I knew where Sally was!"

She was behind the door with the vines! He was facing away from the door, so he grabbed the knob with his tail and ripped it off its hinges before barreling through. It led to a small hallway; he ran as fast as he could, his wings tearing huge holes in the wall as he passed. The vines which covered the doors whipped around his feet and across his face, but he ignored them and kept going forward. His friend's screams still rang fresh in his mind. His instincts had long since taken over any of his rational thinking. He was no longer Jack Skellington: he was anger. He was rage. He was energy and violence and terror and fear.

He was falling!

The vines suddenly came to life! They all sprung from the walls and wrapped around his body, wrapping up his entire frame in a matter of seconds! Jack tore out of them soon enough, but found himself in another room from where he had been trapped.

It was huge, decorated with golden ionic columns and red banners. Jewels of every type covered the room celing to floor and glittered in the flourescent sun, nearly blinding Jack in his place. What wasn't covered by precious stones was enshrouded in vines; thick, gnarly vines as thick as a man's arm, leaves as big as a house cat. A thick red carpet split into 6 different rays that spread to each corner of the hexagonal room, leaving Jack confused as to where the "front" was. And he heard laughter. A thick, loud, booming laughter that rocked the whole room-

"Jack!"

Sally's voice!

He finally got his sight back. Sally was to his right, being held against the wall by a thick bundle of green vines. She was watching him with a terrified expression, obviously shocked by the fact that the love of her life was now more of a monster than usual. But Jack's vision was taken soon enough by...

It was him. Pumpkin Head himself. But now his gigantic pumpkin head was at least 7 STORIES TALL! The stem of his pumpkin head split into a nest of vines which wrapped around him and nested him against the wall securely. Pumpkin Head looked down at little Jack with detailed, glittering eyes, spitting out jets of fire as long as Jack was tall with every breathe. Inside the Pumpkin Head's gaping maw was a bonfire of red flame which whipped around his fanged mouth. And Jack could just barely make out... something in the back of Pumpkin Head's mouth...

Santa's hat!

"YOU!"

Jack charged at Pumpkin Head, only to get whipped back to the ground by a vine.

"Jack, no!"

Before he could shake himself up, Sally had ripped herself out of the vines, run over to his side, and had hoisted him to his feet. Slightly confused (because Sally, he knew, was nowhere near that strong), Pumpkin Head's evil laughter snapped him back to reality. He spread himself out in front of Sally and spread out his wings, shielding her from the fire.

"That's very cute!" spoke Pumpkin Head, rattling Jack's bones as his voice echoed throughout the entire castle. "You don't even remember what happened to you all those years ago, and you're still defending eachother!"

"What are you talking about!" Sally commanded, Jack still too angry to think much unlike a wild animal. "Who are you?"

Pumpkin Head laughed again. "Oh, it's funny. I remember now why it was so easy to conquer you all; Halloween is a holiday full of _idiots_!"

Jack began to charge forward again, but Sally grabbed him by the wings and held him back. "Jack, _no_, that doesn't work!"

"I leave signs of my reign as king everywhere!" Pumpkin Head roared, "And no one is smart enough to even think about my existance until I come back to take my throne!"

"You stole the throne from Jack!" Sally corrected, anger welling up in her voice and making it warble. "You're no king, you're just a monster!"

"Oh, but I am king..." Pumpkin Head pushed his gigantic self closer to the floor, a wave of vines moving out of the way and up the wall to accomodate him. "The true king. The Pumpkin King."

Jack began to roar, Sally still holding onto him with her newfound might.

"I wish-"

Jack jumped in shock. How did he know!

"They remembered."

The memories flooded back to him like a blast of lightning: how Pumpkin Head had invaded Halloween Town with an army of ghosts and overthrown his father as Pumpkin King; how he talked everyone, including a young him, into thinking that he was the only truth, the only king, and the only authority; how they terrorized the humans of the mortal world for centuries; how, one day, a woman named Sally had arrived and changed everything; and how he made the wish that made no one remembered King Hirac.

Jack fell to his knees, the influx of information pounding his bones like a sledgehammer. Sally, too, fell behind him onto her back, clutching her head in pain. All over the mansion, screams of terror, pain, and rememberance were heard, all soon drowned out by Hirac's great laughter.

"You fools! You thought that you could truly be controlled by this tiny little waste of a king!" he cried to no one in particular. "I am the true power! I am the ultimate authority!" He added under his breath. "And I'm lisp free now, thank me."

Jack was attacking him again within seconds. Hirac grabbed him with and tendril and held the Pumpkin King in front of him, relishing in the moment. "Poor poor Jack... just like your father in almost every way. You fight bravely, blindly, and are nothing compared to me."

Jack felt the fury deep in his bones, and he struggled against Hirac. "You're not half the king my father was!"

"No, but I'm 500 times more powerful than the two of you combined, now- ow!"

There was a quick snap of green, and suddenly Sally was being held beside Jack in another, somewhat bigger, vine. "Oh, Kerry Kerry Kerry..."

"For the last time, I'm SALLY!" screamed the ragdoll.

"You put her down!" Jack threatened.

Hirac ignored Jack and pulled Sally close to his eyes, tongues of flame just barely missing her cloth skin by inches. "You could have had a king, but you close some ignorant bone-bag over me-" Sally kicked him right between the eyes! "OW!"

He viciously threw Sally across the room in shock! Jack roared in anguish and dug his claws into Hirac's vines, ripping open one and spilling Hirac's precious chlorophyll onto the floor! The pumpkin headed one shrieked in pain and, again, threw Jack across the room and right back onto Sally, who was knocked dizzy by the sudden impact.

Jack shook his head and began to get up, only to have Sally hold him down again. "Jack, no! You can't hit him!"

"Then how am I-"

Jack didn't finish. The sound of a building collasping focused his attention back on Hirac, who was being attacked by a flock of gargoyles! They all went after his vines while Hirac's head tried to scorch them with firebreath, and soon sections of tendrils were falling to the floor!

"Thank you, Pyramus!" Jack squealed, jumping to h- Sally pulled him back down AGAIN!

"Jack, this won't work!" Sally finally was able to fully explain. "Hirac can regenerate himself through his vines! There's no way to attack him directly!"

Well, this was a stunning blow to the plan. Jack fumbled for words before realizing he couldn't say anything. All he could do was sit here, Sally holding onto him, while his gargoyle brothers were attacking a foe that wasn't getting any weaker!

"I know it's hard, Jack," Sally spoke in almost a whisper, "But think about it. As hard as you can hit him, he can hit you back harder every time. It's like fighting fire with fire; it doesn't work!"

Sally's words sunk in slowly. He could do nothing as a gargoyle... but as a skeleton, he felt delicate and vulnerable, and Hirac would most likely squash him like a bug. She was right; the only thing, probably, strong enough to pierce Hirac's rind was... himself!

"I have an idea!" Jack kissed Sally on the nose. "If I don't survive this, you're in charge!"

And with that, he slipped back into skeleton form and out of Sally's grasp! Leaping boldy into the center of the room, Jack cupped his hands around his mouth and cried. "Big King Hirac can't keep a few gargoyles at bay! What a shame!"

Hirac spied Jack out of the corner of his eyes and hissed through the flock of stone monsters. "Keep your mouth shut! I can crush you like a bug in that weak li-"

WHAM! One of Hirac's vines smacked him in the head! Jack laughed at the car-sized dent Hirac put in the back of his rind.

"SHUT UP!"

"You're one to talk!" Jack laughed. "Not so big and bold when you can't leave your little nest, eh Pumpkin Head!"

WHAM! Hirac's tendrils hit him again!

"Zeeeeeeeeee-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

Hirac burst out of the nest of vines as a 200 storie monster! He stretched out a hand the size of a schoolbus and whammed in down just in front of Jack!

And so Jack ran! The Pumpkin King bolted out the nearest door, which stretched like a balloon for Hirac to fit through. The pumpkin head followed Jack swiftly, a long strain of vines following behind him!

And just second later, the entire population of Halloween Town burst through the door weilding pitchforks and torches. "We're here to rebel, Hirac!"

Sally smacked her forehead. "You're a little late, Mayor, Jack's already led him out of here."

The townspeople were silent, then sighed in disbelief as a unit.

"I don't believe this!" Shock shrieked. "I brought my lucky axe and everything!"

But a smile slipped across Sally's face. "I've got an idea. Gargoyles, get the door. Everyone else, help me with the vines!"

&&&

Jack aimlessly led Hirac through the hallways as he saw fit, making sure to twist and turn as much as he could to tangle Hirac in the doorways. As of now, he had no idea how he was going to get Hirac to beat himself up this time. He just planned on distracting the monster while the gargoyles nipped away at his roots.

He turned around. Hirac's face was manic, and he was running at a stunted crawl through the minimal hallway space. The walls turned black a few feet in front of the pumpkin head from his boiling breath, plants withering and glass melting soon after Hirac passed them. But as Jack looked back, he slowed down; he had to keep running forward. He hissed in pain, feeling a strange sense of imposement. This harebrained plot of his would never work, he realized. He didn't think it through, he didn't have a back-up plan, and he didn't have back-up. It came to him in a flash, the notion that he had messed up by thinking he could do any of this himself, but left him once he tripped on a rug and nearly fell to his doom.

He slipped around a corner, bouncing off of a table corner and turning into a dead end. Crud, he thought, now I've got nowh-

He heard Zero's barking in the distance, which reminded him of how he used to stop Zero from chasing cats. Reaching into his chest, Jack bid Winky-doo a "Sorry" and "Good-bye", then threw him across the hallway! Hirac, predictably, followed Winky-doo before realizing he wasn't Jack, giving the Pumpkin King time to escape. He had to do this several times (he felt a couple pounds lighter, having thrown away most of the junk in his pockets by the end of his run), yet although he was starting to get tired, the mammoth Hirac still wouldn't stop following him!

"I wish I knew what to do!"

Head for the front door, his mind told him. He kept running, reaching into his pocket and realizing that the only thing left ot throw was the jellyball, which was hanging loose and saggy in his fingers. "I've wished too much..."

The doorway was in sight. The wooden doors were open wide, a hundred pairs of tiny stone hands holding them open. With a breath of relief Jack jumped through the doorway just as Hirac placed his hand on the threshhold! The gargoyles let go of the doors, and they slammed shut as if on springs with the force of a moving train!

BOOM!

Pyramus shuffled next to Jack, who was doubled over trying to catch his breath. "I followed Sally's orders to the letter. Did the plan work?"

"Sally, what...?" Jack swallowed a breathe... what was that smell? "Do I smell pumpkin guts- _EW_!" Jack bolted upright and held his mouth shut, the mental picture making his stomach turn.

"I suppose the plan worked then." Pyramus smiled happily. "I am glad to see you safe."

The Pumpkin King rubbed his head gratefully. "Glad I can (pant pant) say likewise (pant pant). Now (pant gulp), what did you say about Sally?"

"Sally sent us to hold open the door." He held up his wings proudly, his piece-together children swarming around their scar-covered father. "She knew you would eventually come here. She and the townspeople stayed behind and sliced Hirac's vines so he would shatter behind the door instead of just bouncing off." The gargoyle shook himself like a dog and tucked a tall gargoyle under his arm. "I found Thisby."

"Thisby?" Jack surveyed Pyramus' mate. "Well, she doesn't look too much like her..." Jack shrugged. "But, then again, none of you do now."

"_EW_!"

"Sally caught up with you."

Jack wasted no time in changing into a gargoyle and prying the door open again, slipping through as a skeleton before it slammed back on him.

He wished he hadn't. Pumpkin guts were everywhere. The entire main hall was orange and studded with tiny, gut-covered elves and one Sandy Claws (who was stuck tight to the ceiling). Jack jumped across the bits that he couldn't walk over and escaped through a door, immediately walking straight into The Mayor.

"JACK!" The Mayor threw his arms around Jack's knees and hugged him, nearly making Jack loose his balance. "We were so worried about you!"

The townspeople flocked around their king and began thanking him for destroying the evil king. The Pumpkin King sighed and shook his head mournfully.

They were _his_ idiots.

&&&

Jack stood atop what was once Hirac's mansion, surveying Halloween Town. It had been 3 hours since Hirac's pieces had been cleared up and chucked in the lake; nighttime was finally starting to settle over the land. Dust had covered what were once pearly white huts and roads, turning everything a nice grimy gray. The river of laundry and suds were now black with mud and dead fish; the fog was gone, and Jack could now see that the forest of gnarled trees were creeping back into the landscape.

"It was our fault."

Jack nodded. "That's not true. It was my fault."

Sally touched his hand lightly. "You're not going to-"

"I'll make sure everyone remembers what happened today." Jack crossed his arms. "We'll have to rebuild HalloweenTown."

The ragdoll stood on the turret next to Jack, holding onto the skeleton for balance. "That'll be impossible."

"I'll wish it back to normal once this little thing is recharged," Jack said, patting the jellyball under his pocket. "But until then, they'll have to work for their town, make it memorable. I hate to say it, but Hirac was right. My people barely know enough to function on their own; they're too easy to control, and I took advantage of that."

Sally nodded knowingly. "You thought they'd be hurt."

"They were hurt more because I didn't tell them."

The ragdoll gave Jack a smile. "I'm glad you've learned this on your own. I was afraid I'd have to tell it to you myself."

"I'm glad you're so nosy." Jack gave Sally's shoulders a squeeze. "You made sure you learned all of that stuff while you were there just so you could help me, didn't you?"

Sally nodded. "It was hard, but I knew you'd come sooner or later."

"I couldn't have done it without you," Jack admitted. "Without all of you, really. The gargoyles, the people, that stupid little elf! What was his name? Winky-doo?"

"Jack, don't make fun of the elf's name." Sally held a hand over her mouth. "But still, it's a litte funny."

Once again, the Pumpkin King heaved a sigh. "I'm going to make sure something like this doesn't happen again. I'll have to make the townspeople think, encourage them to be independent."

Sally agreed, "You can't take care of everything."

Jack let the words sink in a bit. "No, I can't. But, you know what? I can take care of _more_ now. It's had an effect on me. It's made me stronger."

"It's made me stronger!" Sally childishly squeaked.

Jack stroked Sally's head lovingly. "Yes, but your case isa little more literal. I mean emotionally. I'm not going to fall apart into an emotional wreak like I did this time. I promise."

Pyramus' sillouette flew across the full moon. Jack breathed in the fresh air and kissed Sally while her guard was down.

"It'll be hard. But it will be worth it."

* * *

DONE! _FINALLY, FINALLY, FI-NAL-LY!_ It's a little rushed by my standards, but I'm so glad to finally give this story some closure! And now I can begin my other ideas! I'm doing a super-crossover of every single cartoon character I can think of (Jack's gonna be in that one), I'm doing a Fairly Oddparents fic, I'm working on an SD Gundam songfic, and I've got fanart to upload! I'm so glad to finally be done with this! Sorry to the fans if I made it seem like I don't care, but I'm just so glad to have an ending! It's like the last day of shooting on one of the "Lord of the Rings" movies. 

THANK YOU ALL! GOOD NIGHT!


End file.
